Posted
by
timothyon Thursday February 06, 2014 @10:26AM
from the budget-suddenly-has-room-for-a-shredder dept.

An anonymous reader writes "A new study sheds light on the attitudes of a very exclusive group of IT and security managers — those employed by U.S. defense contractors — at a time when national cybersecurity is under scrutiny. Most indicated that the Edward Snowden incident has changed their companies' cybersecurity practices: their employees now receive more cybersecurity awareness training, some have re-evaluated employee data access privileges, others have implemented stricter hiring practices. While defense contractors seem to have better security practices in place and are more transparent than many companies in the private sector, they are finding the current cyber threat onslaught just as difficult to deal with."

One more crippling bombshell hit the already beleaguered Slashdot community when IDC confirmed that Slashdot page views has dropped yet again, now down to less than a fraction of 1 percent of all websites. Coming on the heels of a recent Netcraft survey which plainly states that Slashdot has lost more market share, this news serves to reinforce what we've known all along. Slashdot is collapsing in complete disarray, as fittingly exemplified by the stupid fucking beta website and the wholesale discard of user feedback.

You don't need to be the Amazing Kreskin to predict Slashdot's future. The hand writing is on the wall: Slashdot faces a bleak future. In fact there won't be any future at all for Slashdot because Slashdot is dying. Things are looking very bad for Slashdot. As many of us are already aware, Slashdot continues to lose market share. Red ink flows like a river of blood.

Slashdot Beta is the most endangered of them all, having lost 93% of its core users. The sudden and unpleasant departures of long time Slashdot users Jordan Hubbard and Mike Smith only serve to underscore the point more clearly. There can no longer be any doubt: Slashdot is dying.

All major surveys show that Slashdot has steadily declined in market share. Slashdot is very sick and its long term survival prospects are very dim. If Slashdot is to survive at all it will be among S&M enthusiasts. Slashdot continues to decay. Nothing short of a miracle could save it at this point in time. For all practical purposes, Slashdot is dead.

That crippling bombshell sent Slashdot fans into a tailspin of mourning and denial. However, bad news poured in like a river of water.

"There's nothing that beta.slashdot.org cannot do. beta.slashdot.org can simply do anything. Anything rendered in beta.slashdot.org is fantastic. I love beta.slashdot.org. I can't get enough of beta.slashdot.org. Return to betadom, you insolent insects! You're nothing without beta.slashdot.org! Why not use beta.slashdot.org? Linux is garbage; it wasn't made for beta.slashdot.org. Why do you cower? Because you're not using beta.slashdot.org. Use beta.slashdot.org already! Return, return, return, return, return to beta-dooooooooooooooom!"

Slashdot was dieing before, fewer people were turning to Slashdot before the beta in favor of other aggregate site like Reddit. Dice's answer to this problem is to make it look more like Reddit. The thing Dice doesn't understand is that change for the sake of change irritates their users, Digg changed their interface and people left in droves. Slashdot will never be able to compete with Reddit by being like Reddit instead they will be alienating their loyal followers, for a chance at new users. Betting a do

..All sense of time has deceived me as the day has started out with thick clouds overhead. It is difficult to tell if morning or early afternoon. I've struck my head on something earlier as I collapsed, shortly after waking, and have no idea how long I've been out. An odd fog has rolled in from the north; cold and dank, reeking of stale piss. I wonder if there are others out there.. Afraid and confused.. Shackled to the same fate as I. This godforsaken Beta UI.

I have swallowed my pride and dignity and, against all my best instincts, I have entered the beta. I find myself standing in an open field west of a white house, with a boarded front door. There is a small mailbox here.

The mailbox contains a small figurine of some sort. Upon closer inspection, it appears to be constructed of some sort of fossilized wood, depicting a once-popular actress alongside a popular southern state hot grain product.

You open the mailbox. Peering inside you see a Post-It (TM) note stuck to the back of the mailbox, which you must reach in to remove. Scrawled in blood on the Post-It (TM) note are the words "Welcome to Slashdot Beta! Love, Dice Holdings, Inc. P.S. Enjoy your stay."

The best part about Slashdot for me was really the people who visit it. This site has had one of the most intelligent communities around. This is how the site is successful IMO. Really good people massing together behind it. Finding and promoting articles is one thing but the commentary is where it really takes off. Almost every time I view a story what I find more interesting is the story that develops below it. I really don't know of another site where I can attempt to follow a debate about nuclear fusion, and find a debate about Apple only a page apart. This is about to be taken away as the best and brightest around here are going to leave as they are fed up with these beta changes, and Slashdot as a quality site will die. The new site takes away from the comments and the user driven atmosphere and plasters it with pictures and wasted space. This protest may seem futile at first to the bigwigs at the top here, but like I said the best part about this site is the comments. Therefore, if the only comments left are ones complaining about beta, its going to be a very accurate view of the future of Slashdot from here onward if the beta continues.

The question : what can replace it if/when this is required? This episode is making me wish I'd been keeping up with the federated technologies people have been experimenting with - a federated nerd community that somehow included moderation wouldn't make me cry. It's strange but I've actually returned to IRC after 15 years - the dev communities I'm interested in have channels on FreeNode, and it's one of the only other truly nerd-friendly hangouts left.

Actually... I've created a channel on IRC called #slashdot-refugees (on FreeNode... there's even a web client [freenode.net]. Some in the community might want to commiserate, discuss plans of keeping the community together into the future etc.. and a realtime medium might be a good way. It's 2am in Australia though, so although I'm in channel I won't be around for a few hours.

The best part about Slashdot for me was really the people who visited it. This site had one of the most intelligent communities around. This is how the site was successful IMO. Really good people massed together behind it. Finding and promoting articles was one thing but the commentary was where it really took off. Almost every time I viewed a story what I found more interesting was the story that developed below it. I really didn't know of another site where I could have attempted to follow a debate about nuclear fusion, and found a debate about Apple only a page apart. This was taken away as the best and brightest around here left when they were fed up with these beta changes, and Slashdot as a quality site died. The new site took away from the comments and the user driven atmosphere and plastered it with pictures and wasted space. This protest may have seemed futile at first to the bigwigs at the top here, but like I said the best part about this site was the comments. Therefore, if the only comments left were ones complaining about beta, it was going to be a very accurate view of the future of Slashdot from here onward when the beta continued.

Ftfy.

What I think is hilarious is that they can spend resources building the betabomination, but we still use markup from like 1991. Hey guys, there's better forum code out there, where you can even EDIT POSTS!/noveltyshock.

The best part about Slashdot for me was really the people who visit it. This site has had one of the most intelligent communities around.

Exactly. It is not a news site. It is a place where geeky folk discuss techie news items. That's why I've been visiting daily for over 15 years. I'll be sad to see it go. Why does everything turn to shite when the MBAs take over?

Perhaps the Stackexchange guys (known for Stackoverflow) can come up with a nice forum for us...They already have most of the code in place in the form of a Q/A board. And they have the community (programmers, physicists, electrical engineers, etc.)

beta.slashdot.com will re-write your hard drive. Not only that, but
beta.slashdot.com will scramble any disks that are even close to your computer. It
will recalibrate your refrigerator's coolness setting so all your ice
cream goes melty. beta.slashdot.com will demagnetize the strips on all your credit
cards, screw up the tracking on your television and use subspace field
harmonics to scratch any CD's you try to play.

I really don't know of another site where I can attempt to follow a debate about nuclear fusion, and find a debate about Apple only a page apart. This is about to be taken away as the best and brightest around here are going to leave as they are fed up with these beta changes, and Slashdot as a quality site will die.

Yes, but there is hope. Boycott and if that doesn't work, we'll forge another website.

Right on! It would be a terrible thing to disband this community by curtailing the comment functionalities. The discussions are by far.. by FAR the valuable thing on Slashdot, and it's as much due to a balanced moderation system as to the community itself. You don't see many other sites allowing or handling anonymous posts any more. Please don't ruin it!

The meat of Slashdot, the substance that draws viewers here instead of the alternatives, is the comments. Lose those comments and you will lose the eyeballs. Lose the eyeballs and you will lose the ad revenue.

Alternatively, you can accept that you made a mistake, keep Slashdot classic, and keep the steady flow of cash. Make the right business decision, here, Dice. Don't kill the goose that lays the golden eggs.

No legitimate discussion until Slashdot classic is restored. Sacrifice a few days of discussion now to save all the days in the future. The Spirit of Mohdri Dragon [wired.com] Lives! (feel free to get drunk and naked while posting)

Dice have no reason to keep the comment system - commenters don't make them any money. Large click-through rates on huge adverts and paid placements/slashvertisements make money, and those are things that the current user base are extremely sensitive and hostile to. So the easiest solution is to gut slashdot from the inside out by destroying the thing we come here for - then all of us pesky marketing-resistant geeks will fuck off someplace else, leaving the si

Me: Beta can't be that bad, right?
*clicks link to see beta version of article*
Me: Wow. That's terrible.
It's like Digg and Reddit had a baby. Whoever thinks it's a good design should go back to working on the latest internet startup that ends in "er" without the "e".

I've been lurking on Slashdot since its inception but haven't felt the need to create an account until now. I will be joining the boycott on February 10-17th. Beta is absolutely terrible, I gave them that feedback when they introduced it and apparently so had everyone else but they chose not to listen. This site is something special, please don't let them destroy it.

Slashdot Beta..poster child of the new VP in charge of Slashdot at Dice. Budget has been eaten up, Beta is finally ready. VP has to either launch the Beta or quit. I pity the VP! Extremely ugly options, both.

Apparently Dice subscribes to the Microsoft/Canonical "Do what we want.. FUCK the users of our product" schoool of thought.. Witness Windows 8 for Microsoft, and Unity for Canonical/Ubuntu... "We know what's best for you, and you'll use it and LIKE it!!".. ummm... No we won't.. For my (shudder) occassional use of Windows, its Windows 7 till hell freezes over, and, though I used to swear by Ubuntu, now I swear AT it.. Moved without regret to Debian... Wonder where I'll go when Slashdot takes the "dirtnap"..

I think you should make/r/slashdotrebooted and take your whining there.

It's hilarious that these people think Slashdot is being destroyed by more javascript, as if the last redesign didn't fuck it all up and they just kept on reading it. It was actually destroyed years ago by shitty editors and the eternal september of its readership. Slashdot hasn't had influence or an interesting community in a long time.

"British intelligence agency Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ) reportedly used spoofed LinkedIn and Slashdot pages to compromise the computers of network engineers working for global roaming exchange providers based in Europe."

Is it possible that all of us, right now, are logged into a spoofed page that has replaced the real Slashdot for reasons known only to GCHQ and the NSA? 'Beta' is probably the final stage in whatever sinister plot they have planned for us.

I would think a more believable story is that the NSA/GCHQ is simply paying Dice to destroy a possible/actual forum for IT dissent.

More honestly, "Never ascribe to malice, that which can be explained by incompetence". The simplest explanation is that Dice has no idea what

And where is the training on ethics, and legal responsibilities, and how to get hold of an inspector general, and how one is allowed to blow the whistle when your PHB dreams up some utterly unConstitutional scheme?

Not gonna happen.

And, off-topic, with all the screaming and yelling about the "new" version (which I didn't even bother looking at - I'm still on "classic", and don't know why it needs to change), maybe it'll piss off enough of the brain-dead dorks and trolls who have nothing to say about an actua

Cybersecurity is a joke as long as NSA and other government agencies are poking access, surveillance and disruption holes in everything that they can. There will be much hype about cybersecurity to "protect" us as a guise to control, subvert and shutdown at will as much actual "computer power to the people" as possible. Be aware and do not play into this.

Please address people's concerns about the new web site look or put it off for a long time. I am trying to read very important stories on this web site and it's drowned in protesting (annoying but I understand why). So would the peeps running slashdot please ADRESS THE CONCERNS of people so we can have comments RELATED TO THE STORY. Thanks.

My advice to the peons working on Slashdot: find another job. The veracity with which this "upgrade" is being pushed displays a stubbornness that can only be attributed to MBAs with no idea of what Slashdot is about. The fact that the commenting system is such an afterthought in the Beta is as much evidence as I need that the people pushing this redesign never use this site.

I know you don't get to decide whether or not the Beta moves forward or which design gets used, but believe this: You WILL be blamed when it fails. You work for a corporation now and the higher ups with undoubtedly throw you under the bus when they have to explain to their bosses or shareholders why the website redesign failed. This failure is going to be associated with you and your teammates and it will set back any hopes you have of being promoted within the company. Take the advice of me and my fellow Slashdotters: Get out now.

The veracity with which this "upgrade" is being pushed displays a stubbornness that can only be attributed to MBAs with no idea of what Slashdot is about.

Right, because nerds have never been known to compulsively obsess over doing things their way regardless of what the user wants. I suggest that your stereotyping doesn't help; focus on the problem, not your hypothetical reasons.

Also, I'm not sure that "veracity" means what you think it means. But then, I'm a nerd with an MBA, so what do I know?

Hah. You're right about the word veracity. I should have used arrogance or audacity.

You're also possibly right that the workers think they have created gold too. However, any project manager worth his salt would look at the reaction to the redesign and change the course of the work. The lowly nerd at the bottom of the totem pole might be stubborn enough to want to keep his way, but he has no power. The managers are the ones with the power to decide whether or not the beta moves forward. It is ultimately their fault but it's unlikely that they will shoulder the blame.

The Slashdot that you knew and loved is going to disappear. Slashdot doesn't make money. And things will change to make this company worthwhile, otherwise, you'll see the domain name sold off or turned into an online retailer for computer equipment or something.

Why is Slashdot not making money? Ad based revenue or lack thereof - and all of us with AdBlock. Making money off of ads only works for those selling ads - Facebook a

As one of the first users of this site (yes, I know my UID number, it's not my original one),
I fully support this.

Moreover, IF the people running this site are so obstinate, stupid, and ignorant that they
persist anyway: then the boycott needs to be permanent. We ALL need to leave. We need
to teach a lesson, and if the only way that lesson can be communicated is over the bleak,
abandoned corpse of slashdot, then that's how it has to be.

I could warn you of course, but you would not listen. I could
kill you, but someone would take your place. So I do the only
thing I can. I go."

That's it really... where would we go? Slashdot isn't the site it's the community. There has been OSS work on federated search, and federated social networking, but a federated discussion site with a decent moderation system would be nice right about now. Is it even a solvable problem?

I don't usually respond to off-topic stuff like this, but seriously what the fuck is up with the beta design? This crap is terrible...absolutely terrible. Do not want. I've been wondering why I still stick around/. but I think the new site might be the final nail in the coffin for me.

My favourite thing about the beta so far is that the headline of this story was cut off by the stupid front page redesign. It's like they're saying: "you don't really need to read the story, just look at this stock image about it and you'll know everything you need to know!"

The stupid people are already well catered for. Turn on any TV and you'll find something for the people who don't care about the facts, but want to know that everything's going to be ok, and want something interesting to talk about at pa

All of the comments are just talking about Beta, which is completely understandable but completely uninteresting. [Note to the mods: this is how it should be. Trying to bury the Beta discussion won't fix things.] I'll check back in after the boycott and see if there's anything left standing.

If there isn't, I want to thank all of you for many years of good conversation and interesting discussions. This was a great thing to be a part of for a time.

I'm going to have to add a firewall rule to keep habit and muscle memory from bringing me back here until then. Productivity, here I come!

This is a person. She wakes up every morning, goes to work, and drinks her share of coffee. She had only so many hours a day to devote to community problems. She's got a boss and corporate leadership who set goals she must fulfill. And she probably has a personal life she'd like to lead too. Maybe even children who are definitely more important to her than the bitchfest going on at/.

The problem here is one of a corporation taking a community website and then systematically ignoring that community's input. We've seen it with the moves into business intelligence and the hell-or-highwater drive to beta. While a community website such as Slashdot is valuable to both its users and its owners, the relationship between the company and the community is asymmetrical.

There is relatively few effective mechanisms available to the community to have its will heard, short of simply leaving and never coming back (which defeats the point). Thus, concerned users are identifying the fulcrums around which this problem is revolving and applying leverage there to attempt to restore some balance between the goals of Dice and its user base.

While I agree that we should not be hassling private citizens outside their role as an employee, we are certainly at liberty to express our views and have them listened to. We're trying to save Slashdot's profitibilty, and by extension their employment, by ensuring that the website remains one that is attractive to its user base.

While the designer of the website is on the clock and responsible for the design and deployment of Beta, we are obliged to try to make them see that this is a terrible decision.

I think it's more analogous to new Digg than/r/politics. The awful Digg website design drove off users never to return. There are several other sub-Reddit that took the place of/r/politcs. Hell, we could even make a slashdot-esque sub-reddit.

Dude, don't worry - by the looks of it, Alice Hill appears to be woman. This isn't 4chan or reddit, the worst she can expect from us slashdotters would be an army of us asking to carry her books every day.

I got a response from her over linkedin that she no longer works there:

"[AC], I'm not sure what is going on today, but I have not been with Slashdot Media for some time.( Guess I need to update my LinkedIn profile.) I gather the beta is causing some negative responses. I can tell you that the site feedback is taken very seriously and no one wants to drive away a loyal community. Please use the submission forms or whatever process is in place because the data is being compiled and that will drive a lot of the changes made.

My apologies for any negativity - I have been a/. user since the 90s myself.

As a friend of mine said a few years ago: "Every tech-head on the planet goes to Slashdot". He was right. Slashdot is more than an ordinary website. It is practically an internet public house, a geek watering-hole, international web discussion forum, and the best sources of technology "lore" around. We have all learned more, about life and tech, from lone comments here than from an

People have repeatedly enumerated the things they don't like. Don't be lazy; read the commentns. tl;dr: It's ugly. It wastes a lot of space. It is missing a lot of features that long-time users fine useful. It is change for the sake of change

It stands to reason that this system has been around a long time and would not be built to handle newer technologies, so at some point you'd have to rebuild it from scratch to optimize newer web applications, right?

Wrong. I don't think you even know what you're talking about with the "at some point you'd have to rebuild it from scratch to optimize newer web applications" comment.

Ultimately I see the same comments, the same moderation system, and the same news stories, with some new features. I'm not a big fan of the default design, but the FAQ says you can still use the same "Classic" design with the new system.

The Classic site will disappear in a couple of months. Suggest you re-read the "Movin on up" ban

We need the Snowdens of the world, precisely because you can't do "whatever you want" in a "free country". The NSA etc. thinks that because they're "the good guys" they can do whatever they want to catch "the bad guys." They can't: we have the constitution, and if they can't do their jobs while following it, we need to replace them with people who can.

Dear God. It all makes sense. The GCHQ and NSA and assorted DoD ne'er-do-wells have replaced our coffee with Beta. And I bet they're surprised we noticed.

(Look, it certainly sounds all paranoid and nonsensical, but it makes as much sense as Dice thinking Beta was actually an improvement. More sense, really. I'd say that the odds-on favorite explanation for Beta was lulzsec taking full advantage of Slashdot's famously creaky security and defacing the hell

Maybe Michael Cristopeit and his merry band of sock puppets will make their triumphant return. With the Slashdot population devastated by the loss of all the constructive posters all that will be left is a wasteland of GNAA posts, MyCleanPC spam and those bizarre posts about eating poop.

Now that I think on it, some of the classic slashdot trolls are part of the sites charm and one of the reasons I kept coming back all these years. You just don't see Natalie Portman, naked and petrified, covered in hot gri